Worked example: the £105 month-one stack
Theory is cheap; let's assemble an actual stack. Take the twelve categories a solo growth operator genuinely needs in month one, and pull the cheapest priced entry in each from our catalogue:
| Category | Cheapest priced entry / mo | Free tier available |
|---|---|---|
| Analytics | £0 | Yes |
| Forms & surveys | £0 | Yes |
| Productivity | £4 | Yes |
| Automation | £4 | Yes |
| Social | £5 | Yes |
| Project management | £5 | Yes |
| £8 | Yes | |
| CRM | £8 | Yes |
| Scheduling | £9 | Yes |
| AI writing | £9 | Yes |
| Meetings | £14 | Yes |
| SEO | £29 | Yes |
The paid floor of this twelve-category stack is roughly £105 per month. And because every one of those twelve categories also carries a free tier, the honest starting cost is closer to £0 — you upgrade individual lines only as volume forces your hand.
Set £105 a month against a single growth hire. One generalist marketer in the UK earns around £25,000 to £30,000 a year, which fully loaded with NI and pension lands near £35,000 to £42,000 — roughly £3,000 to £3,500 a month before a desk or a tool. The complete twelve-category floor is under 4% of one loaded salary — and it does not need onboarding, does not take holiday, and does not leave for a competitor. The arithmetic is not subtle. The reason most companies still carry the headcount is not that the tools are missing; it is that, until recently, someone had to operate them. Remove the operator constraint and the spreadsheet tips decisively toward the lean stack. For the opinionated short-list version of this exact build, read The growth stack a solo founder actually needs.